She asked for a rugged professional man who owned his own home and did not smoke. She got a lorry-driving chain-smoker who lived in a caravan. No wonder Janet is suing the agencyfor eight dating disasters
Janet Forse looked mournfully into her glass of mineral water and wondered how soon she could politely make her excuses and leave. Across the table, Terry, her date, inhaled deeply on his seventh cigarette of the evening and changed the subject from his home - a caravan - to his career: lorry driving.
"As he detailed every single haulage firm he'd ever worked for, rating them for speed and efficiency, I found myself feeling lower and lower - I couldn't believe how dull this man was," says Janet, 49, a property developer from the Forest of Dean.
"But then it got a lot worse when he started trying to look deeply into my eyes and suggesting we had a 'special connection'. Frankly, the only special connection I felt like having at that point was with a nice cup of tea before an early night - on my own.
"At the end of the date he even asked if he could kiss me on the lips. I refused as kindly as I could and then he lunged at me anyway, to give me a smacker on the cheek instead.
"I couldn't get out of the bar quick enough. And as I drove home, all I could think was: that was one of the worst evenings of my life. And the biggest irony of all was that I was actually paying for it!"
Like thousands of others who find themselves single in middle age, Janet, the mother of two grown-up daughters, had put her faith in a dating agency. She was hoping to find, as she puts it, 'someone to grow old with'.
Her expectations were relatively modest. She asked for a rugged professional man who owned his own home and did not smoke. So you can imagine her reaction when she was paired with a nicotine-addicted lorry driver who lived in a caravan. It was, she admits, not quite what she had in mind at all.
"When I signed up to the agency, I was assured that it had lots of men just like the one I was looking for," she says. "So being sent on eight dates on which none of the men were anything like up to the standard I was expecting was a real let-down."
And Janet is not the sort of person just to shrug her shoulders and put such a disappointment down to experience. Instead, she is taking the introduction agency concerned to court under the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 for 'failing to use reasonable care and skill' when matching her with potential dates. No doubt the result of the case will be awaited with great interest by scores of other women who have been bitterly disappointed in the same way.
In bringing this case, Janet has attracted ridicule and sympathy in equal measure. While some feel she has every right to seek recompense in court, others conclude that anyone foolhardy enough to trust their romantic fortunes to a matchmaking agency deserves everything they get.
Her story begins in January this year, with a New Year's resolution to join a dating agency and make a fresh start in her life. It was a resolution she was soon to regret bitterly, but at the time her hopes were high.
"I had been married twice," Janet explains in her first newspaper interview. "The first marriage was an act of youthful folly when I was 18 and in the Army Pay Corps, to a sergeant ten years older than me. It lasted only a couple of years.
"Then I married again and had two lovely daughters, now in their 20s. But sadly, my husband and I drifted apart when I was in my late 30s. He was a quantity surveyor and went off to live in Abu Dhabi, leaving me to bring up the girls, who were nine and 12, on my own.
"I pulled myself together and started a beauty treatment business from home so I could be there for the girls and provide for them financially. For many years I didn't want another man in my life. I was too busy and too wrapped up in raising my children.'
During 1997, however, Janet met a mechanical engineer. "We dated for five or six years, but lived apart because my daughters were my priority," she explains.
"Then three years ago, with both girls off at university, it seemed a good time for us to move in together. But things didn't work out - perhaps I was too used to my independence, but I found him very controlling. In the end, I was getting so stressed that I realised I was going to have to end the relationship after nine years."
The pair parted last November, and by January Janet was, she believed, ready to move on. She was realistic enough to see that meeting men on the off-chance in her close-knit village was unlikely, to say the least.
So it was that she made the - with hindsight - disastrous decision to follow up an advert in her local Yellow Pages for the New Horizons agency which boasted a 'head office' in a village nearby.
"I now know, of course, that it was run by one man from home and that the head office was his spare room," says Janet ruefully.
But at the time she liked the sound of New Horizons, which promised to be a 'sociable, caring, professional introduction agency' and had as its logo a glamorous couple in black tie embracing and drinking champagne. Even this tired cliche was not enough to put her off.
The agency was run by one Mike Lavender, a former car salesman who came to visit Janet at her home and spent an hour-and-a-half listening to her requirements.
"To be honest, he was a bit of a smoothie, a little smarmy really," says Janet. "He kept looking round the house and saying how great it was. Then he asked me what car I drove and when I said it was a Ford, he tutted, shook his head and said that might not be what some of his gentlemen members were used to.
"His own car was very flashy, I remember. I suppose he's made a lot of money from this business. But what he said did give the impression that all his members were very smart and exclusive, which I suppose is the image he was trying to convey. When I consider now the sort of men he sent me, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
"He asked me what my criteria were with a partner, and encouraged me to be very specific. He assured me he had 4,000 members in my area, so I could really pick and choose.
"I said I wanted a man who owned his own home, was well-educated and employed in a professional or semiprofessional career and didn't smoke. I also asked for a man who was of a rugged, rugby-playing build and was well-groomed.
"Why should I expect anything less than that? I believe that people from similar backgrounds are more likely to have a successful relationship.
"I've worked hard all my life to be financially secure and I wanted to meet someone with the same approach to life. I'm allergic to cigarette smoke and having worked for years as a beauty therapist, I take care of my appearance, so that's why those things were important to me. I didn't want to have my time wasted by men who were not suitable for me.
"Mike Lavender assured me he had lots of men who would suit me down to the ground. He then asked me to pay £249 for a year's membership and even had the nerve to ask for it in cash. I refused, saying I always paid for large sums by cheque. I should have heard warning bells there and then."
Instead, Janet was too excited at the prospect of meeting a new date every week for a year to quibble.
And just two weeks later - once her cheque had cleared - the details of the first man, Robert, arrived through the post.
"We spoke on the phone and he seemed nervous and not terribly confident. But he sounded nice and so we agreed to meet up. I got a real shock on meeting him, though. He was a carpenter and looked as though he had just stepped out of his overalls after a day at work. He hadn't even had a shave.
"We muddled through the date for a couple of hours and it didn't go too badly, although he was very quiet and not at all my type.
"At the end I had to say to him that although I'd be more than happy to meet up for a drink or a walk sometime, I didn't see the relationship developing into anything special.
"I went home feeling quite disappointed, but consoled myself that this was just the first of many dates. Little did I know how much worse they were going to get."
Next on the list was Simon, who ran his own engineering business. "He was only separated, not divorced, and said he had to be careful that his family didn't find out he was going on dates. I couldn't believe they'd sent me a married man - what a cheek!
"I found the whole cloak and dagger thing very off-putting. Whether it would have come to anything, I don't know, because he simply never rang me again."
Janet's next date was Nigel, who ran his own garage. "He really was a little strange, with long grey hair and earrings. At the end of the date, he just jumped up and said 'If you want to see me again, the ball's in your court, I'll leave it up to you,' and with that, he was gone. And I'm afraid I could never have seen us as a couple, so I didn't ring him."
At this point, Janet is at pains to say that her grievance is not with the men she dated, but with the agency that arranged the encounters.
"How anyone could have put me with any of them and expected it to work is beyond me. This was supposed to be a bespoke service that I'd paid good money for, and it was making a laughing stock of me."
If Janet thought her first three dates had been disastrous, she was about to hit a new low with the arrival in her life of Terry the lorry driver.
After their unhappy meeting and his lunge for a kiss, he sent Janet several enthusiastic texts before she told him, as gently as she could, that he was not for her.
Having discarded the chainsmoking Terry, Janet was then paired with Ian, who, she says, sounded quite promising during their first phone conversation.
But things began to unravel even before she had set eyes on him. Unfortunately, he rang twice more before their date, apparently so drunk he could barely speak.
"I could just make out that he was upset because his football team had lost," says Janet. "That really was the final straw. I phoned Mike Lavender personally to complain. I was furious he had sent me this collection of unsuitable men."
Interestingly, on three separate occasions when Janet called Mike about their escalating dispute, the answer was the same. "He told me he was in Spain and would sort it out when he got home, and then blamed 'the girls in the office' for matching me with the wrong men.
"I'm not even convinced there were any girls in the office, but I do think he spent half his time in Spain instead of running the business. Be that as it may, on this occasion he also tried to convince me that Ian was not drunk but had a speech impediment.
"I pointed out that I had spoken to Ian earlier in the week and he had been able to speak perfectly normally. At that point, Mike gave up defending the man and instead said that he would take a 'personal interest' in my dates from then on.
"I replied that I'd give him another month and then I wanted my money back, to which he replied: "You obviously have a very high opinion of yourself, Janet." I could not believe how completely he had changed his tune from when he was busy promising me the earth when I signed up.
Janet's next date was Geoff, who at 59 was four years older than the age limit she had specified of 55.
"However, he did seem very nice," she says. "He brought me flowers, insisted on paying for all the drinks and seemed like quite a gentleman.
"But then he told me he lived in a bedsit and had been unemployed for three years due to a health problem. We met at 7.30pm and the date was over by 9pm - he said he had to go home to bed.
"I did feel very sorry for him, but I am not a counselling service, I was trying to find the man of my dreams. I was so furious with Mike Lavender for putting us together. I'd asked for a professional man with his own house, and he'd sent me someone jobless who dossed in a bedsit.
"Afterwards, Geoff texted me and said he felt we had a future together. I let him down as nicely as possible, but I felt awful he should have been put in that position. It wasn't fair on either of us."
Once again, Janet complained to Mike Lavender, who once again answered his mobile in Spain and once again blamed 'the girls in the office'. He also, when pressed by Janet, admitted that he had just 400 or 500 people on his books, a tenth of the number he had originally claimed.
Now virtually despairing of any success, Janet resolved to go on one final assignation before she gave up the agency as a bad lot.
She arranged to meet a man named Jonathan, who was a driver for a company of auctioneers.
"Jonathan was a really nice man, probably the best of the lot. But he was a marathon runner and very slim indeed. Some women find that attractive, but I had specified I wanted someone big and burly. He just wasn't my type at all.
"We did get on well as friends, though, probably because we spent the whole evening talking about how awful New Horizons was.
"We were united in loathing. Jonathan told me he had been with the agency for the best part of a year and it had struggled to find him even one date a month and that I was the only presentable woman he had met.
"And bearing in mind that it was meant to be a local agency for Gloucester, Mike Lavender had been sending him off on dates miles away on the other side of Bristol.
"When Jonathan complained, Mike just said: 'I suppose you want them living in the same street, do you?'
"We both resolved to stay friends when we parted, although I had to tell him he wasn't my type romantically. I came home and phoned Mike in desperation. Yet again, he was in Spain.
"Again he said, more nastily this time, 'You really do have a high opinion of yourself,' and then said that he hadn't given a refund in 16 years of business and wasn't about to start now."
To a furious Janet, it was a red rag to a bull, and just the incentive she needed to launch a legal action. "I rang my local Trading Standards office and they told me I had a good case, especially because of the discrepancy between the number of profiles he had and his claims in his adverts.
"They suggested I take him to the Small Claims Court. It would only cost me £30 if I didn't have a solicitor and represented myself. So I decided to go for it."
Janet's case will come up in the next fortnight.
Now, she is philosophical. "All I want is to meet someone I can spend the rest of my life with. I've brought up my two daughters and I'd like to go travelling and have fun with someone who really suits me. Is that too much to ask?"
Apparently so, if you sign up to New Horizons.
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